Clover Trail is Intel's next Atom, the chip which refuses to die, representing an evolution of Medfield and the x86 instruction set. That didn't stop Intel from making a bizarre statement that Linux will not run on Clover Trail, even though it ran fine on Medfield and is an OS for x86 architecture chips. It is more accurate to say that some features of Clover Trail will not currently work under Linux, specifically the new power states introduced in the new Atom. Until the Linux kernel catches up to the new technology the new C and P states which can turn off the clock on the chip while still enabling 'instant on' will be unavailable which is a far cry from not being able to run on the chip at all. Thanks to The Register for immediately stomping on that FUD.

"SAN FRANCISCO: CHIPMAKER Intel has confirmed that it will not provide support for Linux on its Clover Trail Atom chip.

Intel's Clover Trail Atom processor can be seen in various nondescript laptops around IDF and the firm provided a lot of architectural details on the chip, confirming details such as dual-core and a number of power states. However Intel said Clover Trail "is a Windows 8 chip" and that "the chip cannot run Linux"."

Intel will be focusing a lot of attention on the mobile phone market this year, already they have started in Asia but hopefully it won't be too long until we start to see them here in North America. Currently their Medfield SoC is fabbed on the 32nm process but we can expect to see 22nm chips with lower power consumption in the very new feature. Companies unfamiliar to the West, such as Lava, Orange and ZTE are already either selling a phone or are about to release one, but those do not define the limits of the market. DigiTimes describes their plans for the coming year as aggressive but with ARM already deeply entrenched in this market we have yet to see if this is the market where Atom will really find a successful niche.

Lava International already launched its 4.03-inch Xolo X900, featuring Atom Z2460 processor (1.6GHz), 1GB memory, 16GB storage capacity, 8-megapixel camera and a battery that allows users to connect to the Internet through 3G for five hours and talk for eight hours. The smartphone is priced around US$400."

The new Atom processor, named Medfield, has appeared in a market far, far away. The chip powering Lava's Xolo X900 runs at 1.6GHz and supports hyperthreading, the graphics core is clocked at 400MHz which Intel believes should be enough to allow it to output 1080p video via its HDMI plug. The power efficiency of the new architecture has yet to be tested but the claim by the manufacturer is eight hours of talk time and five hours of 3G web browsing. There are no available benchmarks yet but you can get an idea of the overall capabilities of this phone at The Inquirer.

"Intel and Indian handset maker Lava announced their intention to ship an Atom smartphone at Mobile World Congress in January. However Lenovo's K800 received all the attention, so Lava's Xolo X900 slipped under the radar to become the first shipping smartphone to feature Intel's Medfield Atom processor."

To revive an old buzzword some of you may have forgotten, ubiquitous computing is the current holy grail of the computing industry. If AMD, Intel, ARM and to a lesser extent NVIDIA, can get the market to prefer one of their low power processors over the competitions there is a lot of money to be made in the mobile market. The way that they are approaching the market is very different however. In Intel's case they pride themselves on the general computation power of their upcoming Medfield processor though that comes at the cost of power consumption and less graphics capabilities. AMD. like Intel, are trying to reduce the power consumption of their chips and though they lag behind in general CPU performance the graphics capabilities are generally considered superior.

Then there is ARM, which is striving to overcome its reputation of providing chips low in power, both electrically and computationally. Their latest Cortex processors are certainly display a vast improvement in performance compared to previous generations. The power consumption may have increased but not to the levels of consumption of the Intel and AMD chips. Intel and AMD need to continue lowering their power consumption without sacrificing power while ARM needs to increase performance without impacting the power consumption before anyone can be considered a clear winner. There is another consideration which DigiTimes points out; right now ARM is winning the price war which could be every bit as important as power consumption or computational power.

"While Intel and AMD have been making efforts to develop low power processors for use in smartphones and tablet PCs, they cannot compete with solutions from ARM in terms of price, according to notebook makers."

With Medfield being a large part of CES 2012, there is a currently a big focus on Intel's foray into the mobile world. One company that does not seemed worried is ARM who have been, and continue to be, the largest supplier of processors for mobile applications. DigiTimes spoke to Jeff Chu of ARM who stated that his company does not perceive Intel as a threat to their market share. That perception is largely based on the limited product lines that Intel currently offers, as compared to ARM who offers a very wide variety of platforms.

On the other hand intel, even with record breaking income, might be a little concerned about ARM. With Windows on ARM arriving to the market some time in the near future Intel could see erosion in their desktop business, as for that matter so could AMD. As well with companies like Caxeda creating rack mount servers utilizing ARM processors both of the major server chip suppliers should probably be a little worried. After all there are about four ARM processors per person on the planet currently.

"ARM is not under competitive pressure from Intel's move into processor platforms for handheld devices, because Intel does not let clients know the value of adopting its platforms while ARM has provided different application platforms for different partners for market segmentation, according to director of consumer, client computing, Jeff Chu for ARM.

Chu pointed out that ARM has already developed products to correspond to Intel's Medfield platform, and since Intel is currently only promoting one platform, ARM's different application platforms allow the company to achieve its goal of market segmentation."

Intel hopes that 2012 will finally be the year they see mainstream phones with Intel inside. Despite Intel's attempts to tell us otherwise for the past several generations, the upcoming Medfield design is the first truly serious attempt to enter the phone and tablet market currently dominated by the many ARM-based partners of phone manufacturers all over the world. A recent post over at Technology Review discussed the advantages that Medfield offers over previous Intel Atom-based designs with Steve Smith, Intel's VP of Architecture.

First shown at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco this past September, a Medfield-based reference design has many believing in what some thought was impossible but what others thought was inevitable: Intel x86 cores in a phone that matters. Why the change from many in the analyst space? Medfield is the first option from Intel that is truly a single-chip solution, removing design space concerns and power consumption issues that previous Atom-architecture solutions were saddled with.

The phone prototype seen by Technology Review was similar in dimensions to the iPhone 4 but noticeably lighter, probably because the case was made with more plastic and less glass and metal. It was running the version of Google's operating system shipping with most Android phones today, known as Gingerbread; a newer version, Ice Cream Sandwich, was released by Google only about a month ago.

Intel has a lot of experience in the consumer markets though it took a shift inside the company to really put the focus on phones and tablets over netbooks and convertible-notebooks. At the recent showing not only did they have the reference design phone but also an iPad-like tablet device running Ice Cream Sandwich, another key to the consumer's dollar. And as you can clearly see in the diagram below, there is a lot of money being made that Intel wants in on. A LOT.

Intel will also enjoy a process technology advantage over the competition with current Medfield SoCs built on the company's internal 32nm process and the upcoming 22nm technology promises even more power consumption advantanges. ARM designs are built at different foundries including Samsung and TSMC and while they are competitive, no one can keep up with Intel on this front.

The diagram shows that power consumption on Medfield should be competitive with the current ARM-based SoC leaders in the market today. Areas like 3G standby, basic audio playback and video playback should be accomplished with minimal power draw in order to have battery life extended to at least current expectations. The performance graphs here on Browser Mark and "Graphics" are impressive as well though obviously we have a TON of missing information to really make the graph meaningful. Anand puts it well:

Barring any outright deception however, there seems to be potential in Medfield.

With the release of the Intel Z68 chipset behind us by several weeks, Intel spent the opening keynote at Computex 2011 creating quite a buzz in the mobility section of the computing world. Intel’s Executive Vice President Sean Maloney took the stage on Tuesday and announced what Intel is calling a completely new category of mobile computer, the “Ultrabook”. A term coined by Intel directly, the Ultrabook will “marry the performance and capabilities of today’s laptops with tablet-like features and deliver a highly responsive and secure experience, in a thin, light and elegant design.”

Intel is so confident in this new segment of the market that will fall between the tablet and notebook that they are predicting that by the time we reach the end of 2012 it will represent 40% of Intel’s processor shipments. That is an incredibly bold claim considering how massive and how dominate Intel is in the processor field. Intel plans to reach this 40% goal by addressing the Ultrabook market in three phases, the first of which will begin with ultra-low-power versions of today’s Sandy Bridge processors. Using this technology Maloney says we will see notebooks less than 0.8 inches thin and for under $1,000.

Intel held its annual Investor Meeting today, where the chip maker talked software, the state of the business, as well as new hardware and leveraging microarcitecture leadership. This installment focuses on the mobile hardware aspects.

Partway through the Intel Investor Meeting 2011, David Perlmutter stepped on stage for his keynote speech. As the Vice President and General Manager of the Intel Architecture Group, he delved into the advancements that Intel has made in smaller transistor manufacturing, and how those advancements will help Intel to break into the mobile and handheld computing market with low power and high performance SoCs (System on a Chip). During the meeting, Intel stated that it has always been known for performance, but not necessarily for being low power. With their recent advancements in moving to smaller manufacturing nodes; however, Intel has positioned itself to have power efficient processors that are low power and with power to deliver a fluid user experience in mobile devices. David explains that power efficency follows along with Moore's Law in that as the transistors get smaller (and with Intel's advancements such as 3D transistors), the chips become much more power efficient. With each successive shrink in manufacturing nodes, Intel has seen higher transistor switching speeds and lower current leakage compared to previous generations:

What as these new power efficent chips amount to, is Intel's new ability to break into the mobile market and become extremely competitive with the ARM architecture(s). David showed off two examples during the Investor Meeting 2011 in the form of an Android smart phone and 7" tablet powered by 32nm Medfield mobile chips.

The Medfield powered Android smart phone.

An Intel powered Android tablet that will be available to developers soon.

The phone is a hyper threaded, 32nm Intel Medfield mobile processor that runs the Android 2.x operating system and is poised to compete with the current dual core ARM powered smart phones. A dual core version of the mobile SoC is also planned in the future. When questioned if the rumored quad core ARM smart phones would pose a problem for Intel's planned single and dual core phones, David responded that the number of cores is only one aspect of performance, and is a measurement "much like megahertz was in the '90s" and hinted not to count Intel's processors out even when competing against quad core ARM processors.

The tablet did not recieve as much attention as the concept phone; however, we do know that it is capable of running Android Honeycomb, is 7", and will be powered by a very similar 32nm Medfield chip.

Intel projects that by 2015, not only will they have passed 14nm manufacturing nodes (which are planned for 2014) but the SoCs will have 10 times the graphics and computational power as their chips released this year.

From the keynotes at this year's meeting, Intel is both enthusiastic and confident in their ability to finally dive into the mobile market in force and become a heavywieght competitior to ARM. Their plans to bring the x86 instruction set and power sipping chips to the handset and netbook markets is a bold move, but if their projections hold true may result in a massive market share increase and further innovation in an even more competitive mobile market.